Tuesday, November 25, 2014

I am a big fan of the Internet of Things - all the smart
devices that are changing our lives by being connected to the Internet. I
consider myself a pioneer and early adopter of these gadgets. What worries me though,
are the security and privacy issues involved with using such devices. So, what
are the concerns?

Well, I am not too worried about my IrrigationCaddy sprinkler
controller. Even if someone was to hack into it, the most damage they could do
is to make my lawn look greener. After all, we’ve been conserving water heavily
in California and the lawn looks pretty dry. Similarly, I am not too worried
about all the Belkin
WeMo switches and outlets that control the lights in my house. A possible
hacking could lead to some pranks or annoyance but it would probably not
represent a significant security concern.

But I am a bit more worried about my Nest
thermostat. The concern is not so much the temperature in my house but rather
the fact that the device knows when we are home and when we are away. After
all, we set it on “away” mode when we leave town to conserve energy. Knowing we
are away could be some very useful information for a potential perpetrator
planning a break-in.

Similarly, the wearable devices represent a privacy concern.
Jawbone recently published a fascinating blog post
about the effect of the Napa earthquake on the sleep of Bay Area residents.
While the data is fascinating, it also conveys a disturbing fact – the device
knows when you are asleep! What’s the worry with that? Well, if someone were to
break into your house, knowing that you are asleep would be pretty useful
information, wouldn’t it?

The concern with cloud-based cameras such as the Dropcam – which is now owned by Nest, a
Google company – is also pretty obvious. The camera feed is available and often
also stored in the cloud, which begs another obvious privacy concern. The fact
that Google owns both Dropcam and Nest is only adding to the concerns. After
all, Google has been pretty open about their disregard of consumer privacy.

What concerns me even more is the trend towards smart cars.
Sure, the Tesla is pretty awesome and the factory’s ability to upload
and deploy patches and updates over-the-air is amazing. But what vital systems
of the vehicle can be controlled remotely? Could a possible hacker make my car
stall while driving on the on the freeway? Could they lock or switch off my
breaks? That could become a life-and-death scenario.

I was recently at a conference where I saw a panel about the
future of smart cars.It was scary to
see how the insurance companies are chomping at the bit to get the car
manufacturers to implement smart devices that would monitor our driving
behavior. They claim it is only to our benefit – the good drivers would pay
lower premiums than the bad drivers. In fact, the Progressive Snapshot
already does that, albeit on a voluntary basis. But it is a small step from
Snapshot to the Fitbit activity tracker and
if your health insurance company starts accessing your daily activity data to
adjust your premiums, you may get worried about the Internet of Things. And
rightfully so.

The Internet of Things, the world of smart devices connected
to the Internet, will make our lives better. In fact, it will make our lives amazing. But if the data falls into the wrong
hands, which is not an unreasonable concern, the smart devices could represent
a major privacy and security concern for all of us.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Today, Microsoft and Dropbox surprised us all by announcing
a partnership. According to the announcement, Microsoft Office applications on
mobile devices will be integrated with Dropbox to allow direct access to
documents from within the Dropbox folders. This is a big deal.

With this announcement, Dropbox has the chance to effectively
become the file system for mobile
devices – the file system in the cloud. This is something that Apple didn’t include
in all the ingenious plans for its iOS operating system. Apple has always
claimed that applications and their data need to be compartmentalized. But
people wanted a file system – perhaps that’s what 30 years of DOS and Windows
dominance have taught us. Dropbox came up with an alternative and it became
hugely popular.

Apple eventually relented and started introducing iCloud as
a way to share data in the cloud, primarily for music and video content that
is. Yet Apple didn’t pay much attention to documents, which opened up the
window of opportunity to the likes of Dropbox, OneCloud, and Google Drive. Not
to mention that only a few users have figured out how Apple iCloud actually
works.

Since then, Dropbox has been a run-away success, attracting
well over 300 million users. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and dozens of other
vendors attempted to follow in their footsteps. Now, it would appear that
Microsoft is conceding the race to Dropbox. That alone is huge. Microsoft OneDrive
struggled from the beginning to gain any meaningful market share and now, its
future is uncertain.

The greater deal yet, is the fact that by way of closely
integrating with Microsoft Office, Dropbox really has the opportunity to become
the default file system for mobile devices; a cloud based file system –
something that Apple failed to deliver.

The announcement begs another question. Giving up on OneDrive
in favor of Dropbox is a massive concession. Microsoft doesn’t concede anything
often. Dropbox got itself a sweet deal and Microsoft didn’t do it just because
it gives the users a choice of storage. Sure, Microsoft gets more money from
selling Office than they ever would get from OneDrive, but I suspect that Microsoft
is likely getting something more in return. Today, we can only speculate what
it is. If I were to place my bet, I’d be putting my chips on Microsoft Azure
right now, at the cost of Amazon EC2. I suspect that Dropbox may be leaning
closer to Azure now. But that’s of course just speculation.

Today, the world may have changed a bit. Or, maybe it
changed a lot. Dropbox has been given the opportunity to become a major force
in the cloud-a mobile game of thrones. It doesn’t change much for the
enterprise customers who will still need to ask whether the consumer-focused
Dropbox is an adequate solution for sensitive corporate data. But in the
consumer space, Dropbox has been handed the keys to the kingdom.